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Comet 67P carries two ingredients for life: glycine, phosphorus

KEY INGREDIENTS Phosphorus and glycine, both essential to life, have been found at comet 67P, seen in this March 29 picture from the Rosetta spacecraft.

Rosetta/ESA, MPS, UPD, LAM, IAA, SSO, INTA, UPM, DASP, IDA

Two more of the ingredients for life as we know it have turned up in space, this time from a comet orbiting the sun. While hints of both have been seen in comets before, this is the clearest evidence to date.

Glycine, the smallest of the 20 amino acids that build proteins, is floating in the tenuous atmosphere of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, researchers report online May 27 in Science Advances. Comet 67P’s atmosphere also holds phosphorus, which is essential to DNA and RNA. Both detections support the idea that comets are at least partly responsible for seeding early Earth with material needed for life.

The phosphorus, glycine and a handful of other organic molecules were detected by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, which has been in orbit around 67P since August 2014 (

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